1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parking assist method and a parking assist apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
One known parking assist apparatus, for assisting in a series of operations in parking a vehicle, obtains image data using an in-vehicle camera which is attached to the rear of the vehicle and outputs the image data on a monitor display mounted near the driver's seat. Although the in-vehicle camera typically provides images of the area behind the vehicle (or more specifically, images of the area behind the rear bumper of the vehicle), the area beneath the body of the vehicle and the area around a rear corner of the vehicle are out of the viewing area of the in-vehicle camera. Therefore, the further the vehicle enters a parking space, the less guidance landmarks, such as a white line marking the parking space, can be seen in the viewing area of the in-vehicle camera, so that it becomes difficult for a driver to park the vehicle because the driver can not determine the relative distance between the vehicle and the parking space or the position of a wheel stop in the monitor.
To resolve such a problem, an apparatus, which stores image data obtained by an in-vehicle camera in a memory and which displays composite image data made up of accumulated past image data and current image data, for example, is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-244688. Such an apparatus reads out image data for an area (blind spot) hidden from the in-vehicle camera and outputs a composite image using the image data.
However, in the conventional apparatus described above, the composite image is always displayed upon completion of storing image data, for example, even during the early stage of parking such as when the vehicle has not even begun to enter a parking space. Therefore, even if the driver wants to see a wide view of the area which is currently imaged by the in-vehicle camera, the unwanted composite image may be displayed on the monitor. Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus which displays the composite image only at a suitable time, i.e. when the driver wants to see the area (blind spot) hidden from the in-vehicle camera.